


Draco Malfoy and Oh For Fuck's Sakes Harry

by deja_lu



Series: Depressed Gay Dragons [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-04
Updated: 2019-11-04
Packaged: 2021-01-23 00:17:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21310987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deja_lu/pseuds/deja_lu
Summary: Snippets from Draco's perspective from the world and general timeline of Harry Potter and The Depressed Gay Dragons - because fuck narrative integrity, am I right?
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Series: Depressed Gay Dragons [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1536334
Comments: 4
Kudos: 39





	Draco Malfoy and Oh For Fuck's Sakes Harry

**Author's Note:**

> This has also been sitting on my laptop for two years, so fuck it.

There were only a few things Draco Malfoy had politely requested from life in recent history:

  * Aestheticism (think Oscar Wilde: “All art is quite useless.”)
  * Floral Leggings (see above)
  * Reliable Supply of books (see above again)
  * To tame his dragon in fucking peace

This was not a lot, Draco reasoned. This was a quite acceptable request. Draco was used to being spoilt, no denying that, but hey? He’d grown up?

“Oh no. Oh bloody fucking hell no.”

Draco turned around. Low and behold; t’was Harry Fuckwit-Potter.

Somethings you just can’t win. Draco prepared himself for hip-hitching.

* * *

“I’m only going to say this once,” said Draco. “Because I Have Grown.”

“Oh,” said Osh, “yeah, baby.”

“But I uhhh.” Draco swirled the coffee at the bottom of his cup heatedly. “Fucking hate that Harry Potter is here. In the Himalayas. Where I am. Where I live. Where I lived _first.”_

“Okay,” said Osh easily, and plucked his coffee cup from his hands to down the dregs. Draco watched her. All love did was rob him.

“What are the fucking chances? Really? The Himalayas, Osh. _The Himalayas._ Dragon-taming. Doesn’t he have – fuck, I don’t know – Auroring to do? Being famous? Being morally outstanding?”

“Mmm.” Osh licked at the edge of the coffee cup. “Mmmmm.”

“I know I’m a bitch. _I know_ I ask to get my pearly white ass beat. But this? Really? It’s the _Himalayas_.”

“Baby,” said Osh, and finally put a hand on his shoulder. Her eyes were glossy and reassuring. “You’re making this a thing.”

“I’m not making anything a thing,” Draco protested. It came out sounding like a dying bird, even as he said it. “It’s just – it doesn’t make any sense Osh.”

Osh raised her chin. This was the part where she delivered her killer blow. Draco knew it.

“Life’s a circle,” she said. Like it was that easy.

* * *

When did it start? Draco wasn’t sure. For so long everything had been narrow-sighted – actions following each other, things he had to do – making it through the day, the month, the year, this entire fucking life – he hadn’t been able to afford to think. To think about it. About anything.

He just managed.

After he moved to the Himalayas, it was like all he did was think. There was so much _space_ here – between the mountains and trees and great blue sky, the parts of him that were tucked away fluttered up and unravelled, great sprawling landscapes of thoughts, feelings – a form of honesty that encompassed the world and swallowed it whole. Osh helped. No one had ever loved him like that before.

No one good, at least.

And then, there was Tom. Tom with his kind eyes and steady gaze, Tom with his temple and soft hands and strong thighs. Fuck, Draco had loved those thighs. The past was in the past, and he didn’t love Tom anymore (or ever?), but he had loved being sat up on those thighs, his back arched, neck tilted to the sky – for the first time in his life, getting something _he_ wanted for himself.

But then it hadn’t been enough. Would anyone be? He didn’t know. He had his books, he had his cottage – he had Mayo. It had to be. Van Gogh had said that:

“…and then if I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough, what is enough?”

He had his books. He read so much the pages would curl around the pads of his fingers when they sweated. He read so much he saw the world in ink. He read so much he felt alive again.

It _was _enough.

He survived.

And then there was Harry Potter.

At the very beginning, Draco didn’t let himself think about that either. And then he realised what he was doing, and made himself stop.

“Look,” he had said to Mayo when they were flying around Yoga Mountain, “I’ve got to feel this. It’s not right not to.”

They veered over some more trees. Draco’s ankles were cold. He needed to knit more socks.

“Or,” he said a few moments later. “It won’t go away. Regardless. Unless I feel it now.”

Mayo chirped at a squirrel, the lame bitch.

“Oh my god,” said Draco. “What if it doesn’t go away?”

Then he went mad with reading. All of Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice on its own, at least four times (although he could never decide which of them was Darcy and which one Lizzie). A godforsaken amount of poetry. Sonnets, especially, until he decided the feeling was more lyrical. A lot of Walt Whitman (Merlin, the _humiliation_). Eventually resorting to shameful self-help books which definitely made things worse. And then – and he would take this to his grave – _Twilight._

In the meantime, Harry began to like him.

He could tell. He could always tell. He noticed everything when he wasn’t constraining himself – every detail, every tiny gesture. It wasn’t even a stereotypically Slytherin thirst for knowledge or whatever – just pure ambition, just an innocent consumption of the world around him. He was grateful to be alive, was what it was probably.

God, he was so fucking grateful.

Anyway, he noticed everything. But particularly about Harry. And he could tell, just from looking at him, just from the quality of his voice – that Harry found him…bemusing. Funny. Like an annoying household pet, or one of those ugly dogs that are kind of cute when you squint your eyes. At first, he had thought it was pity, because Harry had seen him at a time when he really, really wasn’t supposed to have been seen – he _couldn’t_ think about it, he had to – but it was okay, after a while, because he began to realise it was more than that. Harry…_liked _him. He couldn’t decide if that made it better or worse.

(It made it better. Of course it did.)

_(It was so much worse.)_

But for a long time, Draco took it as it was.

He was so fucking grateful.

* * *

“Oh no,” Harry Potter was saying. “Oh bloody fucking hell no.”

Draco was staring at him. At his lovely brow skin, his golden glow – the thick unruly mass of his hair. His shorter build. His eyes, as green as anything, as green as God, as green as hope. His slim collarbones. The way his hands were put together. Everything that Draco loved, spread out before him – here to ruin him again.

“Potter,” he said. “Nice to see you here.”

“Oh fuck no. Oh fucking hell. Fuck me. Malfoy?”

He was so fucking beautiful.

Draco hitched his hip. Really, he had nothing to lose.

* * *

_I’m in love with you._

He was murmuring it into crooks of Harry’s body with his mouth, every time he loved him down like this. _I’m in love with you._ He didn’t know if Harry heard. Draco was very good at noticing, but when his feelings were as big as this, it was difficult to see past them.

He supposed it didn’t matter too much. Harry was still jerking against him like something holy. It was exactly like everything he had read about. It was nothing like that. It was real. Harry was quieter than he had expected, and also smaller up close. He forgot that he was taller a lot of the time. It didn’t really matter though, if Harry was on top of him.

He liked it when it worked out like that.

He also liked this.

When he came, he always thought of this, over and over again: how it was Harry that was touching him, and how intimate it was. All he had ever wanted was to be close.

He was close now.

“_Harry,”_ he said. Harry made what he supposed was some kind of agreeable sound.

* * *

“_Harry,”_ he said. Harry looked over from where he was hopelessly holding out his hand to Jane. Jane was glaring at the hand in a very, very discomfiting way.

“I just don’t get what I’m doing wrong,” said Harry for the third time that afternoon. He sounded like a child. Draco tried very, very hard to fight against the instinct to feel _endeared._

He couldn’t help himself. “It’s because you’re not wearing the leather.”

“Oh for fucks – _Malfoy.”_

_“Harry,”_ said Draco, just to rub it in that he could say it. _Harry._ Harry Potter. He could acknowledge their shitty, childish, fucking cringy ass past all he wanted, but Draco? Draco was –

Well. He was done with the past, was what he was.

“This is so fucking unfair,” Harry was saying now, stomping about and being generally sexy and surly. “It’s _so _unfair. Why are you here? Why are you here _now_? It doesn’t make any sense.”

This was starting to sound eerily like Draco’s own complaints. He eyed Harry warily. Not that Harry would pick it up.

“Life’s a circle,” he said after a long moment. Harry slapped his hands cartoonlike over his forehead.

“What The Fuck,” he said emphatically, slowly raising his hands from his head back up to the sky. “Does That Even Fucking Mean.”

Draco didn’t even know why he was typecast as the Dramatic one. At least he was funny when he did it.

“Like, do you even think before you say stuff like that? Or is it like, let’s just pull out the most random Namaste chakra ass bullshit crap off the top of my head to make Harry feel unenlightened? Like, is that actually it?”

Draco leaned back against the rock behind him and stretched out his legs. Pink magnolias today. He liked these ones. He liked how one of flowers stretched right across his butt.

“Oh my god,” he said, raising his voice. “You know the word chakra? Harry, do you, like, do yoga or something?”

“I’m quitting,” said Harry, and started to storm off. “That’s what I’m doing, telling Charlie that I’m quitting. Have a nice life Malfoy.”

“Cute,” said Draco, picking at one of the magnolias. “Have a good time.”

“Thanks,” said Harry, and then finished storming off. The taming area was quiet for a bit.

“Well,” said Draco after a moment, locking eyes with (unfortunately named) _Jane. _“What about you? Do you think he meant it?”

Jane blinked her beautiful blue eyes slowly at him. It was disconcerting, if Draco was being honest, how calm she was. He had never seen a dragon like it. Perhaps he should bring it up with Charlie.

But sometimes one just needed to be quiet. Draco could get that. He blinked back at her, and then started to stand up and stretch.

“Me neither,” he tossed back into the taming area as he walked away, mostly just to finish his own conversation.

It was a long walk back home for him. He’d known when he picked his cottage that it was the furthest away. Unnecessarily so. Charlie had asked him about a million times if he was sure.

He was sure.

He enjoyed the walk. He enjoyed the view. And even though he enjoyed his new friends, he still often enjoyed his own company in a way that was irreplaceable. He knew how to be lonely. He didn’t know how to be in constant company.

He was an individual, through and through. He’d made peace with that a long time ago.

When he got home he kicked his shoes off and then righted them against the wall. Then he set about making tea. He didn’t even like tea in and of itself that much, but he liked the process. It asserted his presence in the house.

Besides, his teapot was fucking cute.

Then he went through to the living room. When he got home, the first thing he liked to do was evening yoga. It kept him going through the sunset, which he could see through the window. It was beautiful, but he always felt so lonely at this time. To the point where it almost wasn’t painful.

Almost. He unrolled his mat. Stretched everything nicely out.

Then he took a shower. By the time he was done, his tea was the perfect temperature. Maybe a bit cold. Nothing was perfect. He liked to read now.

He liked to read anytime.

Right now he was reading some contemporary stuff. It was slow-paced, but he didn’t mind. He read fast anyway. The sun went down.

He had still to cook dinner. Too often, he forgot, and ended up just having toast. Today he made himself get up and make spaghetti. He’d never cooked when he’d still been using magic, so didn’t really notice the extra work.

He ate. He cleaned his teeth. He got in bed. He read some more. Went to sleep, and eventually woke up.

Mornings were always easier times. Forgiving, healing times. He watered all his plants. Made his bed. Chose an outfit and put on makeup. Then he went back to the living room.

He always tried to meditate at this time. Align with the rising sun. But he was always a turbulent thing, bobbing on the surface of reality, always trying to sink a little deeper in.

* * *

“Are you ever going to tell me properly about it?”

Harry was looking at him in the bathroom mirror. Draco could feel the heat of his blood.

He didn’t understand why Harry couldn’t feel it too. Sometimes when Harry strode too close to things like this, he had to leave, and he felt like it always made him seem uncooperative. But the truth wasn’t that at all. He was water-logged with feeling, and sometimes it spilt right out.

Harry thought he was ready for that, but he wasn’t. Not really. Not yet.

* * *

“I want to be respected,” said Draco. The wind was cold on his face. In his peripheral vision, everything was green.

He’d thought about these words for a long time before saying them. He practiced it at all. Now, he saw the way Harry’s face changed, the way he stopped.

The world stopped with him. The was how it was, with Harry. Draco had gotten used to that a long time ago, too.

Last night the world had stopped.

Draco remembered everything. He was going to remember everything for the rest of his life. And it was important now that he clarify the difference between being respectful and kind to Harry, because he _had _been kind – he had always been, much more than Draco, much more than anyone else in Draco’s life. He was kind to the core of him, he was kind to the heart. And it was too much and it was not enough, and it was _ruining_ Draco, all the time –

“I don’t need that,” he was saying now, and it wasn’t true. He knew exactly how much he needed to survive.

He’d made himself a promise.

“Be honest with me,” said Harry, and Draco was looking at him. His eyes were so fiercely green – maybe it was the backdrop here, Draco swore they hadn’t seemed so green when he was younger – and his skin was dark and warm-looking. There was that determined look about his brow that was so very characteristic of him. He had looked so much like this during the war. Draco had forgotten –

“Tell me what you really think.”

Draco told him some of it.

Then Harry apologised – and that was really the start, wasn’t it, for him? Draco didn’t know why it had surprised him so much at the time. Harry loved being challenged, after all.

* * *

“Sometimes I swear you just love to fight,” said Draco. He was standing up, straightening his leggings with his free hand. In the other, he was barely keeping his cup of tea from visibly trembling.

“What the hell?” said Harry, from where he was still on the sofa. “I’m not trying to fight. I was just asking a question.”

“Hell of a question.” Draco couldn’t look at him. He looked at the coffee table instead. He hated fighting with Harry.

“You don’t have to bloody answer if you don’t want to, Merlin.”

Draco exhaled and walked into the kitchen. He rinsed and dried his cup, counting to ten in his head, and then counting to twenty. Then he walked back into the kitchen.

“You know what?” he said, and hated the way his voice came out. Making it obvious as fucking daylight how hard he had to try. How hard he always tried. “You could just have some sensitivity. If you really didn’t want to fight.”

Harry stared at him like he was a unicorn, which only made the burning worse. “How…” he said, and then opened and closed his mouth. “How am I being insensitive?”

“It’s your tone.” Draco straightened up. “It’s the way you say it Harry.”

“How do I say it?”

The awful thing was, Draco knew Harry tried too. And when it got like this, when they were both trying so hard to meet in the middle but still couldn’t reach each other, it made Draco feel like they were failing as a couple. It made him feel sick.

What if Harry one day found someone he didn’t have to try with?

“Like it’s a circus act. Like…something derogatory.”

“Draco,” said Harry slowly, and Draco loved it and hated it when Harry said his name. “I don’t mind that you wear makeup.”

Draco closed his eyes briefly. He knew that. He did.

“Don’t you?”

“When have I ever said that?” said Harry, and now he sounded annoyed, and god, that really was a thousand times worse than all the other things. It made something in Draco crumple in on himself. He stood taller and tried not to show it.

“You thought we were freaks at first,” he began.

“For fuck’s sakes,” said Harry. “Why do you have to bring that up?”

“Because it matters,” said Draco and then pressed his lips together tightly. He didn’t know why he did this. He didn’t know why he did –

“I thought I apologised for that,” said Harry. He was frowning, suddenly, like he’d lost his footing, and seeing him like any fight left in Draco dissolve, easy as butter in a pan.

He leaned sideways against the wall, just a little. “I know. I know you did Harry. I…appreciated that you did.”

“Then why are you mad?” Harry asked and Draco had been wrong, he had been wrong, Harry wasn’t trying to provoke him, of course he hadn’t, it was just the way he spoke, it was just the way his mind worked –

“I’m just trying to understand,” said Harry, and then leaned forward, his thighs parting, his elbows coming to rest on his knees, his chin on his clasped hands. When his thighs parted, the sunlight slid over the curve of his knee and down into the nook of his crotch, gold catching on the ripples of fabric. Above his hands, his eyes were wide and open. Draco parted his mouth to speak – he could feel the air pass over his lips.

“Help me understand, Draco.”

He had to look away, just for a moment; just to catch his bearings. He knew Harry knew he cared, but he didn’t think that he really caught onto _just_ how much, just how big. It was so deep that sometimes it felt like hurting, so deep that it felt like something inside him that was moving and rolling over in its sleep.

“Sometimes,” he said, and these were shameful words. He pushed them out. “Sometimes, it’s just that I feel that you don’t – that you still see me like, you know. The way you did. You understand, you’re not the first – you’re not the only one. I’m not saying that to make you feel guilty. But it’s just…the way you sometimes comment on it. Like it’s still a novelty to you. It makes me feel like you keep me around just becau–”

He broke off, inclining his head even more to the side. He hadn’t meant to say that last line. It wasn’t necessary.

“Draco,” said Harry, and his voice was kind. “I’m not dating you because I think you’re a novelty.”

“I know,” said Draco quickly, “I know.”

“I’m sorry if…about the comments. Like, if the way I talk makes you think like that.”

“It’s not –” said Draco, and swallowed. “Okay. That’s…okay. Thank you.”

He blinked hard over at the patch of floor he’d been looking at. It took a moment. When he finally looked back over at Harry, he found he’d been looking at him.

“Hey,” he said, the light flickering in those green fucking eyes. The corner of his mouth tilted up, ever so slightly. “Wanna come over?”

Draco came over. He’d never admit the way he did it to anyone else. But he went over and curled up onto Harry’s lap and put his face in his shoulder. He’d never admit to anyone else. He could barely admit it to himself.

Harry’s hand came up to rub his back, slowly, slowly. It was warm through his shirt, and Harry turned his head then so he could nose at Draco’s neck, making soft hushing sounds. Draco’s face was red through his skin. He didn’t understand how Harry could be so easy about this, like it was obvious, like it could go unquestioned.

* * *

Draco hated drugs. He hated magic ones, and he hated muggle ones. He didn’t care whether they were soft or hard. Whether there were side effects. Whether they were fun.

It was one of the few things he didn’t like about his new friends, even though he mostly kept his opinion quiet now. Once, he’d had a bit of a nasty argument with Hayden over it, and Oceania had gotten a bit flushed and unhappy and had asked them please not to fight like that. So now he kept quiet.

But he still hated them. Harry Potter was rolling over in front of him and muttering things, his dazed eyes fixing on him. Draco didn’t think he should be here for this. He shouldn’t have come. Why had he come?

“I need you,” said Harry, and then he reached up and took Draco’s hand. Like it was the easiest thing, for him. To just – reach out, like that – and take Draco’s hand. Draco looked down at where their fingers overlapped, a paradox of shape and tone and sense, and knew why.

He hated drugs. He hated them.

“I need you to save me,” said Harry, and it was the way his voice sounded, then. It made something in Draco seemingly wake up, and start howling. It was like finding a new part of his body that could ache. He didn’t understand, then, the first time he felt that.

_I need you to save me. _Dear god, weren’t those words familiar? It was like this had happened before. It was like this was always going to happen.

Draco Malfoy kneeled down beside the bed, his hand still in Harry’s. The back of his hand was against his chest, and through his bones Draco could feel his heartbeat, like this: _duh-dum, duh-dum, duh-dum. _

Oceania and Hayden were too busy smoking more and talking to notice. He looked into Harry’s eyes. They weren’t seeing him anymore.

“I saved you,” he said, and yes, this had happened before, it had happened before, it was happening.

* * *

There was something in the water, thought Draco. And then he thought: no, no, that’s wrong. I got confused. That’s just the moon.

He looked up, and he was right, see, because there it was, bright and full and heavy, almost bursting against its pearly skin, thought Draco – just like him. Something was inside, that could not be contained, and the truth was: sometimes he was strong, but mostly he was weak.

It just could not be contained. He just needed a release.

He took off his clothes. The air was cold on his skin.

Out here, the grounds were so far out that they almost looked wild. The lake was something organic, pure and still and so pretty. He had stumbled upon it once during his walks and thought: here’s a lovely place to read. You could hardly see the Manor from here.

He moved forward.

It was the only way to ever really go, after all. The grass and mud, cold and compressed beneath the roughened bits of his feet. He felt it between his toes first, the change from ground to silt to water-surface; the gradual dampening, and then the sinking in. He was up to shins. He was up to his knees.

He looked upward again. The moon was still there, sublime in all its glowing, in all its light-pregnancy. It was watching him. Sometimes, Draco felt as if he was invisible, as if he could never be seen, but tonight, he felt sure of it – he was being watched. There was something public about it – something performative. Tonight mattered, mattered in a way that so few of his days did recently.

Recently? Ever since the trials, Draco Malfoy had disappeared from the world’s attention. Draco Malfoy had disappeared completely. Father in Azkaban, Mother always traveling, no matter what intentions she had of staying. The house, grey and gaping, a wound that wanted to close around him. Even during the few times Pansy had called on him, there had been something between – a sheen of glass that wouldn’t let him out of his own loneliness. So he gave in.

If you couldn’t get out, sometimes you just had to keep going in.

It was the only way to ever really go, after all.

He closed his eyes. The water lapped up over his hipbones. It was so cold that it felt like something more than pain – an ache that pressed in up at him like a second skin, like another organ. The moonlight beat down against his lids, and he imagined it unpeeling him, undoing all the things he had done.

He was up to his neck. The blue was so deep it was almost black. It pooled up over his chin, his ears. Rivulations kissed his cheeks. The water reached up and pulled him in, tighter, closer, colder, a womb that never stopped swelling. He was here, and he was drowning – and there was no other way; out is in is out is in. He didn’t want any other way, in truth, not really.

* * *

When Harry meditated, the world went still. Something strange happened to the patchwork of reality around him – the fabric of it seemed to almost unrumple, iron-out. Like someone had taken a breath and was holding it, like something precious in their lungs and mouth.

Draco knew he was in love, but he didn’t think this was any exaggeration. It couldn’t be. Surely, it wasn’t Draco making Harry glow like that – surely, surely, his skin was really golden, his soul was really flickering, a candle in the dark room. Maybe it was the temple that made it more intense – maybe it was having him next to Tom. Tom, who was lovely, Tom who was important to Draco – but who he could hardly see next to some stupid Gryffindor boy that he had never befriended, that he had never kissed, that he had never made love to or shared secrets with.

But looking at him – just _looking_ – none of it even mattered, none of it even felt like anything. Love, Draco thought, wasn’t a collection of tender moments, wasn’t a carefully devised plan, wasn’t an experience – it was just a feeling, like – _this _– filling up the space around him, filling up his skin – a rose-bloom of sweetness too thick to think through.

“How do you feel?” asked Tom. It was a strangely resounding moment, soft and uncomfortable – the memory of Tom tugging him close pushing into the room, the clean smell of his collar rubbing against his cheek as he asked the same question, over and over again.

Harry opened his eyes, and they were green enough to be their own kingdom. “Brilliant,” he said, and smiled as if it were the easiest thing.

* * *

“How did you do it?”

“Do what?”

Somehow, even Harry’s wrist was hot underneath Draco’s fingers. “You know,” he said, and let go. “The meditating.”

“I thought you’d done it before.”

“I have,” said Draco, and swallowed. In his head he felt the frustration again, hardened by familiarity, like a callus at the side of his brain tissue. “I have. I’ve tried too.”

The way the light was hitting Harry’s eyes made them look liquid. There was something curious and tentative, something that, to Draco, looked as if it wanted to reach out and touch him. Perhaps it was his imagination. He’d been reading too much.

“I tried too, but I couldn’t.”

“You couldn’t?”

“I…don’t know how to. Empty my mind.”

“Maybe you’re thinking about it wrong.” Harry didn’t say it unkindly. When Harry spoke like this, it was with an almost child-like innocence.

“Maybe.”

Harry swayed forward a little. He was thinking, his tongue curled forward in his mouth. Draco could see the shape of it in his cheek, and felt that familiar lower-gut liquefying.

“Well. I’m sure Tom has other ways of teaching it. You…could ask him about it. And –”

“Will you teach me?”

Harry looked at him. Draco hoped he didn’t notice how rehearsed the words sounded. His eyes had deepened though, and it happened so rarely – once, when Draco had asked for his respect, once, when he had been high and it had been in his voice, when he had said, “I saved you” – but whenever it did, Draco felt that it was like suddenly the two of them fell into sync, a perfect connection reaching out and back in like a threaded needle – so sharp and perfect it could prick through anything, any skin.

“If you want that,” said Harry, and it was like he knew, like he knew already.

* * *

He took him back to his room. It looked just as messy as Draco had thought it would be, but was otherwise a lot more humble and ordinary. Something about the space was self-aware, as if it knew it would never be a home.

Harry was taking off his jacket. He was only wearing a white shirt underneath, and it made the back of his neck look even more brown. As he pulled the sleeves off his wrists, his shoulder muscles pushed up and down.

“Do you want me to take that off?” Draco gave him his jacket, and watched the way his fingers ran over the yellow, brushing the shittily done flowers.

Then Harry took a step forward and sat down, somehow finding space amongst the littered carpet, and then looked up at Draco in a way that was clearly indicating for him to follow. He did.

Then Harry told him to close his eyes, and he did that too. It was different, when you weren’t alone. Instead of disappearing into the room, it was like he became more aware of his body, of the jagged shape of it. Harry told him to breathe in. Draco felt it in his throat, lungs, ribs.

Then a warm hand was covering his. The feel of it was a shock, all rough broad heat. His eyes flew open.

“Malfoy,” said Harry, and the sound of it was a shock, too. “You have to relax.”

“I’m trying.”

“When you close your eyes,” said Harry, “Pretend that I’m not here. Or that I’m not – you know, me. I’m just – a voice inside you. I’m not something else.”

Draco took a breath. He closed his eyes again, softly, softly – trying to contain the strange, sudden urge to tremble that was stringing its way up through his body. Everything was dark, but it didn’t feel dark, and Harry’s hand was still touching him. He was telling him to breathe. He was –

Not here. Not him. Just – a voice inside Draco.

Draco didn’t understand what that was supposed to mean. Harry seemed to want to become some strange, translucent thing – present without being present, not really. And although Draco knew that spirituality generally required some degree of detachment from at least the most obvious layer of reality, Harry was asking too much. He was asking too much. Perhaps he could escape himself, but Draco – couldn’t.

Harry was the realest thing.

“Breathe in,” said Harry, and he was here, he was him and he was –

Inside of Draco.

Draco breathed. It felt jittery, like he was breathing something other than oxygen.

And then something began to change. He became aware of it all of a sudden. Something rich and tender and deep and impossibly _important, _important in a way that so few things were – was rolling over inside of him, languid and young, like it was just waking up. His breaths were shallowing out, but he felt it as if it were in his peripheral vision. He was deeper down than his mouth. He was deeper down than his throat.

He was inside of himself inside of himself inside of him –

And so was Harry.

A thrill ran up his spine. He felt himself sink deeper.

“In,” said Harry, and he was right_ there_, “And out.”

“In,” said Harry, “And out.”

“In. And out.”

In. And out.

Draco could see stars.

* * *

In the dream, it happened like this. Draco was in a lake in the Himalayas and the moon was above him. It was a perfect setting. He took off his clothes and went into the lake. It was almost a perfect memory.

And then the beautiful mirror-surface of the lake went crashing through the night, and Harry Potter was there, and he was frantic, absolutely mad with it, trying to bundle up Draco like he was a child, like something awful was happening. And at the time, Draco couldn’t understand. He couldn’t understand. He couldn’t understand.

He was waking up naked in Harry Potter’s bed with a shirt tied around his waist.

Once he’d stolen some jeans as well, he walked the few metres over to the bathroom and dry-heaved over the toilet. Then he wiped his mouth, splashed his face, and headed back to his house. He couldn’t go back to sleep. He just sat there with his books, a cup of tea, Harry Potter’s clothes and smell and ghost all over him.

He couldn’t go back to sleep. Dreams were becoming a reality.

* * *

“I have to leave,” said Harry.

Draco looked away. “Okay,” he said. He turned around. He walked the long way back home.

Sometimes, though, he still felt like he was walking that walk. Like he had never gotten home. He was just passing time; he was just following the road. But the road never led anywhere.

It hurt too much to stand still.

Sometimes, he still felt it, when he looked at Harry. It wasn’t always because of something he had said, or a fight, or because he’d gotten jealous. Sometimes it just happened. There was deep, bottomless pain inside of him that had never really healed, that had just grown into him and become an extension of his chest. Sometimes he thought it was love. Sometimes he thought it was more than that.

And sometimes he thought that perhaps love was just more than anything anyone had ever prepared him for.

“Are you okay?” asked Harry.

He looked over. There was a low, cold wind today but they were still holding hands. Draco could feel the familiar warmth of it. Harry looked dashing in his new trench coat.

“Yes,” said Draco, because he mostly was, and because some thoughts he still wanted to keep to himself.

“Okay.” Harry smiled. The wind tumbled over the tufts of his ridiculous, wonderful hair. Draco could tell where his eyes would crinkle when he got older.

One of the things Draco especially liked about Harry was that he was so simple. Not that he was stupid, even if Draco occasionally liked to make fun of him for it, or that he was boring, but that he was willing to take life at face-value. Maybe it was a flaw. But when Draco said he felt a certain way or wanted a certain thing, Harry almost always took his word for it.

Harry treated Draco like he was always honest. It made him want to be so.

The path widened up and came to a gate.

“Oh, look,” said Harry, “A meadow.”

Draco squinted. “I think it’s more of a field.”

“A meadow,” said Harry, more decisively this time. He began to roll up his sleeves, which was only mildly alarming.

“I…” said Draco, and paused to squint more. “I can see cows.”

“Even better,” said Harry, and let go of Draco’s hand. “Cow-meadow.”

“Harry,” said Draco warningly, but it was too late. He was already halfway over the gate.

Draco crossed his arms. “If we get chased out by a farmer with a spade up his arse, so help me Potter.”

Harry was already over the other side, brushing off the non-existent dirt on the butt of his trousers. Draco stared, frowning.

“Bringing out the Potter-ing, are you?” Harry muttered, and then raised both his arms to the sky. “Meadcow,” he declared.

Draco was suddenly overcome by a rush of love so big it was embarrassing. It was always embarrassing. He swallowed.

Harry looked over his shoulder. The sun was catching his eyes, but it fucking always was. “Are you coming?”

Draco rolled his eyes, but only on principle. Then he made a show of being begrudging as he approached the gate. He reached for the handle.

“It’s not even fucking locked.”

Harry shrugged. “If I don’t demonstrate Gryffindor heroism, who’s going to turn you on?”

Draco threw grass at him for that. Harry’s response was to hook an arm round his waist and reel him in for kisses. Deadly stuff.

The field was actually quite pretty. And the cows were too far away to be shifty and generally anxious. Far away, the sun was brazen, a brilliant thing.

“I love fields,” said Harry quietly, and Draco looked over at him again. He had his eyes closed, breathing in. Draco leaned in, almost without choice.

“Tell me why,” he said.

Harry didn’t open his eyes. He just smiled. “I don’t know. They make me feel free. Like I can breathe bigger, I s’pose.”

Draco blinked the sunlight out of his eyes. Then he looked around at the green, at the vastness of it, like it would never end here, even though he knew it must.

“That makes sense,” he breathed.

* * *

In the end, it was just this – Harry’s morning breath on his cheek before work, buying dinner ingredients together, learning each other’s grooming routines (if Harry called that grooming). In the end, it was Draco on Harry’s lap as they watched TV and Harry’s eyes on Draco’s as his fingers twisted inside him and the dawning realisation that the future for them stretched out of sight. It wasn’t a loud ending, because of course, endings don’t really exist. There were no explosions, no affairs, only a few fights that calmed down quicker than either of them expected.

Sometimes though, it did hit Draco, the weight of getting something he had wanted so badly. Being with Harry was like walking into a world where love really did win everything and rain became pretty. Draco would stop where he was when he felt it rise up inside him and grow a little off-kilter, find it a little difficult to breathe.

In the end, Draco looked up one night that was so like that night before it all and saw the constellation he was named after. He pointed it out to Harry.

“Ah,” said Harry. “Of course.”

And he looked at Draco like he finally understood everything. It wouldn’t be so bad if he did, Draco thought. It had taken him long enough.

**Author's Note:**

> And that's a wrap! Please let me know what you thought of Draco's POV. Is it how you imagined his perspective?


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